The snide tradition of disrespecting media and movie stars is thriving on delightfully sardonic sites

If irony really is dead, you might mark its toe tag May 10, 2000, launch date of Inside.com Years before co-founding that high-profile media-news website, editor Kurt Andersen co-founded the satiric Spy, a magazine that in the '80s and '90s treated the media and entertainment businesses as sardonically as Inside treats them earnestly. Writing about the new venture in New York magazine, media columnist Michael Wolff argued that you couldn't pull off a Spy online if you wanted to, for the Web is an "irony-resistant environment."

But is it really? Spy's rarefied, Manhattan-centric humor wouldn't be likely to...